The Tamarindo Puppy

The Tamarindo Puppy, is a compilation of poems by Charlotte Pomerantz and illustrated by Byron Barton. This book is so cool! Not only does it have poems for kids in it, but along side each poem is it's equivalent written in Spanish! The poems are a lot like Love That Dog, in that when read altogether they tell a story about a puppy. The images that accompany these poems are a lot like the A Year on My Street, very cartoonish and colorful. I like the use of the Spanish version side by side next to the English version of the text, it seems very useful for English Language Learners in particular. When I was working with Kindergartners, I remember trying to explain the concept of rhyming words to a boy from Russia, who was still learning English; I found that the best way to explain this concept was to use words from the Russian language to help him understand. Experiences like this remind me that there are words that cannot be roughly translated to another langage and still keep the meaning intact. Poetry is notorius for phrasing words that are difficult to translate into other languages, so having the two languages side by side helps not only in language learning, but also the meaning.